The wifer and I decided to head out to dinner last night and we ended up at Fred's Grill. We have been to Fred's on 3 different occasions and have been really disappointed every time. The first time we went there, they forgot about us and the waitress either did not see us or decided not to serve us. We even asked the hostess and the waitress for some menu's, etc but nada...after waiting for about 20 minutes, we decided to find elsewhere to dine that evening...Strike #1
We decided to give them another chance thinking that maybe they just had an off night, were super busy, etc...So we proceeded to be seated at the very same corner table where they forgot about us the first time. We politely declined and told them we would just wait for the next available table...to go ahead and seat the people behind us that were waiting at that table that was offered to us. The hostess argued with us for a while and then looked at us as if we were aliens and reluctantly seated others at the table that we did not want. Based on her reaction to this very simple and polite request, you would have thought we were asking her to solve for World Peace! We were seated and the service was once again v-e-r-y slow...we kept seeing people who arrived after us getting served and figured we must have been lucky enough to have pissed off the staff when we asked them to solve for world peace earlier...Strike #2
At this point we probably should have known better and not returned but alas there are not many places to eat in Butte so we decided to hit Fred's up for a third time hoping our two prior experiences were anomalies. The 3rd time was another disaster with poor service and over-priced food. Strike #3...they should have been OUT but no we were still hopeful......
Enough time had passed that we decided to hit up Fred's again last night. The service was fine (actually it was excellent relative to our prior experiences) but the kitchen staff totally skeeved us out. The wifer ordered a burger and I opted for the fettuccine primavera. The kitchen is visible to the patrons because there is just a bar separating the dining area from the cook area. I made the mistake of watching one of the cooks and watched the following sequence:
Cook grabs bunch of pre cooked fettuccine noodles with his hands and dumps it on a plate.
Cook then wipes his nose with his bare hands and wipes his hands on his t-shirt
Cook then handles the food with his bare hands again
Cook alternates several times between wiping his nose on his shirt and wiping his hands on his shirt.
At this point I called one of the waitresses over and changed my order explaining what I had just seen.
They were very sympathetic to my plight and promptly changed my order...bear in mind the lack of efficiency from ordering to bringing your food and all it meant was we got moved back in the queue and our food would now take even longer - Our food finally arrived and I tried to put the visions of said cook handling my fries with his bare hands again while I tried eating...
Our check came and the waitress comped us my drink so I left a nice tip, but Fred's is no longer on our list of acceptable places to eat.
It did get my mind wondering about how often that happens in kitchens that are not as visible...either that or I am just way too picky about people wiping their noses with their bare hands and then handling my food with those same bare hands.
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